Is it possible some other way? I don't know. I do know that life expectancy worldwide has been going up since the 70s, as has quality of life and quality of nutrition. Maybe what we are already doing works?
Despite purported differences in ideology, US and Chinese government expenditure is roughly the same as a % of GDP.
Most societies are running a mix of private and government directed production and most taxes are spent on communal goods like health care, education, welfare and defense.
I think discussions of social policy are a lot more productive if we stick to the pros and cons of specific initiatives and policy (e.g. universal single payer healthcare, or UBI at level X) without invoking complex labels that trigger knee-jerk reactions.
Personally I don't see why nationalised production of certain basic essentials should be completely outside the overton window. To me it just seems like another tool you could use to achieve social policy.
This "study" is exactly that, verbatim. It's communism dressed up as science, as blatant as I think it can be done.
Now, we can talk about policies that might make something better or worse, pros and cons, whether the state should direct or influence certain industries for whatever reason, all that. But this article isn't doing that. It's recommending straight communism as a solution to all the worlds ills, that's all it is doing.